Tag Archives | scholars

Harvard Gazette on a treasure chest for anyone looking to explore the darkest corners of human experience:

Harvard’s newly acquired Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection is the largest of its kind in the world. It includes a vast collection of boxes, drawers, shelves — whole rooms — full of art, literature, and popular culture artifacts dating back to the 16th century, related to the chief avenues to altered states of mind: sex and drugs.

The Santo Domingo collection is on long-term deposit at Harvard. “We do not own it,” said Morris, but the owners “want us to catalog it, and they want it available for research.” The largest collection of its kind in the world, it will gradually be available to scholars of literature, fine art, photography, film, history, medicine, popular culture, and more.

It has an estimated 30,000 books and 25,000 posters, photographs, and other ephemera assembled by Colombian businessman Julio Mario Santo Domingo Jr., who died in 2009.

Rarely do ideas-put-into-action as brilliant as the Journal of Universal Rejection come along. The JofUR is a scholarly publication with an editorial board comprised of dozens of accomplished academics from across several continents. Subscriptions are available for £120 per year. The website explains every aspect of the journal in hilarious detail, but the guiding principle is as follows:

The founding principle of the Journal of Universal Rejection (JofUR) is rejection. Universal rejection. That is to say, all submissions, regardless of quality, will be rejected. Despite that apparent drawback, here are a number of reasons you may choose to submit to the JofUR:

You can send your manuscript here without suffering waves of anxiety regarding the eventual fate of your submission. You know with 100% certainty that it will not be accepted for publication.

There are no page-fees.

You may claim to have submitted to the most prestigious journal (judged by acceptance rate).